How to be Dead
by attica
Summary: “But you do,” his face breaking into a brilliant smile, summoning little jackhammers upon her heart, as if he was pleased and delighted with this piece of terrible news. “You do fancy me. Dear Merlin, Hermione Granger, you’re in love with me.”
1. Chapter 1

**How To Be Dead**

By attica

Disclaimer: I don't own Draco and Hermione anymore than I own Harry Potter.

**A/N:** This is one of my pieces that I kept revisiting and didn't really have an exact idea of where or how it was going to go. But, bit by bit, it came together, and I have to say, I'm quite satisfied with the turnout. It gave off a profound feeling to me. Anyway, there's a slight chance Draco and Hermione may be a bit **OOC**, but besides that, I do hope you like it.

**A Draco and Hermione Fanfiction.**

No, she didn't think of them as a "thing." Shame would rattle her if such a thought ever crossed her mind, even in the circumstance of being unconscious. Maybe they'd had a "thing." But that word – "thing" – Merlin, how awful did that sound? It sounded horrendously tacky to describe anything, anything at all. But the other word – the word she blanched at and caused a fire to erupt on her face and an explosion of heat that'd made it look like she'd burst a blood vessel – was far more terrible than "thing." Or was it? After all, "thing" was such a vague and unspecific word that led to no direction or idea whatsoever.

But maybe that was why it worked. Maybe that's why she called it that. Because it wasn't nearly half as treacherous as the other word, and it didn't cause her to become flustered and anxious. At least, not as much.

Kiss.

That was the other word. Even thinking it, seeing the letters form in her head like slipping refrigerator magnets sent her mind into a ruinous catastrophe of guilt and disgrace. It made her inwardly gasp to feel that prick of her conscience. Flashes of his lips on hers, warm and moist and everything she wished it wasn't and imagined it wouldn't be, blinked inside her skull like a warning siren. Only, she knew well by now, that it wasn't a warning siren at all. If anything, it was far too late, and therefore could not be considered some Take Heed bell.

Now, she was certain, it was just some sort of mental tool of torture.

But that was it. That was the thing. She couldn't just sit there with Harry and Ron and act as if nothing happened. They didn't know and a part of her felt horribly pinched every time silence befell them, like they were waiting for her heavy confession to just spill from her lips. But – she couldn't tell them! No, she couldn't! What would they take from it? Nothing good or self-praising, undoubtedly! They would only find it as another excuse to rue the day they ever saw Malfoy's pointy pale little face. Needless to say, she felt the same as well. Only she, as an individual, passionately rued the day she walked into the kitchens.

It was just that she never would have guessed tickling the pear would eventually lead to being attacked by, she reckoned with a blushing face, a hormonally-charged Draco Malfoy. And she – appalling more than anything else – hadn't even objected. Not vocally, anyway. Or physically. Thing was: she was in shock, and everyone knows that shock temporarily delays all of the human body's reflexes and impulses and logical thinking. Hermione had learned that everyone had two brains: the cerebral cortex (where all the intelligence was wired into, magically or not), and the primitive animal brain (where all the not-so-intelligent thoughts lay adrift). See, the primitive brain was the one every person in the world was born with. It was the one that spoke of rage and jealousy and all of the dirty naughty things one thinks of sprouting up in the glory of adolescence. The primitive brain is usually subdued and merely blocked out by the cerebral cortex, but there were some things that occasionally make way for the chaos of the animal wit.

That was exactly Hermione Granger's problem. Her primitive brain had been set free and caused things to go amuck. Thus her lips had instantly responded after a half-second or so, only thinking of the way he tasted like butterbeer and peppermint and the way his warm mouth invited her like nothing else she had ever known before. It was the animal inside of her that made her play along for as long as she had, letting him touch her and kiss her like he had.

Because of the stupid primitive brain.

Amusing how a second of shock could lead to humiliation and absolute moral degradation.

Not.

She didn't know why she had done it, really. Except for the shock and primitive brain part, she was still quite at a loss. She found herself solemnly trying to make up the loose ends like it was the frayed sleeves of her favorite jumper. _Why had she let_ _Draco Malfoy kiss her? Why did she kiss him back? _She would've gagged if she weren't so busy envisioning how it would feel to have him kiss her again.

She knew it was sinful, but she was a woman. While it was definitely rare for her to imagine a boy kissing her for she was too busy trying to do all of her work, she only just realized that sometimes it couldn't be helped at all. Her willpower wilted away just as her legs turned into jelly and she suddenly found that she had zero resistance whatsoever. Sure, when she returned of sane mind she would regain every ounce of resistance in the world, but it was almost as if it was her weakness.

Kissing.

But really – how shallow was that? To have her heart shudder with delight and bliss as she tried to remember how his tongue had slipped in against hers? It wasn't her fault he hadn't had a disgusting forked tongue like they said. It wasn't her fault it'd felt fantastic. She wasn't even surprised recalling the details of snogging that Lavender and Parvati had conversed about, feeling her heart flutter when she discovered that it was ten times better than they'd ever told her.

However, currently fumbling with the askew strap of her bookbag, something in her chest performed something very similarly to a somersault when she looked up and glimpsed a flash of tall silver hair sneaking into a supposedly deserted Ancient Runes classroom. In a spur of spontaneity, curiosity, and a desperate thirst for answers, she looked around the swarming crowd of swishing black robes and indecipherable cacophony and slipped past, making sure no one was looking. She followed after him and walked into the classroom with a feline grace she'd never known she had.

It was an abandoned ancient classroom, but the emptiness or its musty smell was not the surprising bit. It was what she found rummaging in the classroom, Draco Malfoy's head ducked into a cupboard and swinging back, tufts of his pale hair catching a misplaced ray of light, as he grabbed something from the top shelf. Hermione sighed silently, feeling fascination crop in her chest as she saw what he held in his hands. It looked like a bottle made of sea glass, glimmering in a short second of radiance, light shimmering through the glass particles and sending a rainbow of vibrant speckles dancing around.

The moment quickly vanished, however, as he rapidly tucked the bottle in the pocket of his robes before she could read what the label had said. He closed the cupboard silently, a loose spew of dust fluffing out in front of him. Then he turned his head and finally noticed her.

He didn't seem surprised, however, as he acknowledged her presence by calling her what he had always called her – "Granger" – but Hermione was only glad that he hadn't called her the other name he had dubbed her. She could feel her muscles tense the moment his eyes, like tinted glass right through a light, bore into her. Like the sea glass's effect from the light, she felt warm glowing spots start to pulsate inside of her.

Somehow, for a strange reason, she could feel the absence of his famed hostility. He didn't sneer at her and only looked at her expectedly, albeit slightly annoyed that she had been watching all this time.

"Well?" he asked her in his same drawl, though there was something off-key about it. Not on the exterior, of course… but on the interior, uncannily. And as she finally got a good look at him, she discovered with a solicitous burning in her throat that there was something wrong with him. He looked off-color. He was so pale he was sallow now – unnaturally sallow.

Almost like… she didn't know. It was a strange feeling, having the knots in her stomach bunch up like penguins in the winter when it had been just fine seconds ago. But she could feel something, something imminent and wrong, that didn't match. Her ability to quickly catch abnormalities wasn't the bothersome part, but whom she had sensed it from.

Malfoy.

"Are you just going to stand there or what?" he asked her, though it sounded as if he was merely bored and not preparing to bite her head off. "Because I don't have all day, if you must know."

"Malfoy," she finally blurted, her voice a spurt of loudness that surprised even herself. Her reeling whirlwind of emotions and thoughts had overwhelmed her to an extent she could not think straight. "What… what are you—"

"Funny, I think _I_ should be asking _you_ that question," he quipped, though not maliciously. "Don't tell me you've picked up another hobby. After all, with stalking taking up all your time, I think your books will be feeling quite lonely."

"I mean what's in your pocket?" she asked, her voice on the verge of releasing a slight tremor. From what and why, she didn't know.

"None of your business, that's what," he said a-matter-of-factly. "Now are you going to tell me why you're here? I answered _your_ question."

"I'd hardly call that an answer," she answered back, regaining more of her composure.

"Take it or leave it," he told her. "I'm not going to give you another one."

"How do I know you aren't stealing?" she found herself saying, though she hadn't planned to say that at all.

He scoffed. "If I wanted to steal, I would steal a desk or a chair for firewood to aid in my scheme of vengeance of trying to burn Gryffindor Tower down."

"Don't joke with me, Malfoy," said Hermione, almost glaring at him now for his impertinence. "I want to know what it is you've got in your pocket."

"Is that really why you're here? Or is it your nagging curiosity to know about what happened in the kitchens?"

Hermione froze. His expression was vague, almost expectant, as if he knew. Then he sat down on the teacher's desk, never taking his eyes off of her. He motioned for her to come sit down next to him. Hermione barely recognized the gesture in all of her confusion until he rolled his eyes and demanded that she get over there or he was leaving.

Tentatively she set her things down by the door and walked over to where he was, hoisting herself up and sitting down on the firm wood. She had made sure there was enough space between them with caution, her eyes flickering down to their feet, nervous. She couldn't look him in the eye. Like glass, when shattered, it was sharp and dangerous.

"Here's the thing, Granger," he told her, though she didn't know if what she heard in his voice was amusement or fear. Or neither. Or both.

"The thing is… I'm dying."

It took a moment for Hermione to fully comprehend the words that had been pushed from his throat. It came so fluidly, almost so nonchalantly but in the very way he had toned his voice – with struggle – she got the hint of pain. She, herself, felt it as well. But in a tumble of fright and shock, she looked up at him, her neck jerking up suddenly. Her tongue felt as if it had crumbled away.

"What do you mean you're dying?" she said, without thinking. "Malfoy, is this some sort of sick joke?" Her voice suddenly became hoarse, a knot tightening inside her and sending jolts of painful tension. "Because if it is, I swear—"

"You swear what? You'll kill me?" he snorted. "Sadly, I am disappointed to tell you, that somebody has already beaten you to it."

If she looked closely, really closely, he wasn't disappointed to tell her, as he had said. He was calm – sad, but calm. Beneath his blond eyelashes she could see his ice-colored eyes flicker with embers of emotion that she could not distinctly make out. But when he looked up to meet her gaze, she actually found herself holding her breath.

She had extraordinary moments with his eyes. Sometimes they gleamed like terrible knives speckled from the rain, sometimes they were fogged over with frost like glass windows in the winter, and sometimes they were just… ice. Pure ice. Cold but magnificent. Hold it too long and it bit, but it was still beautiful. Beautiful even when shattered. But as she looked into his bottomless eyes now, chameleon like nothing she'd ever seen, she received the gist of something different. They almost looked like… telescopes. As if there were many settings to them, wind it to see far or near – whatever distance one would desire. Of course, you would never really know until you saw what you were looking for.

And that's what Hermione felt right then, looking at him. She didn't know until she saw it. And right now, right this moment – she did. She didn't know what it was, but she did. It made her heart stop, the beats still echoing in her brain like a boisterous crescendo sweeping the empty room, and she felt a swell of blending sensations tingle through her body. Like stars, little bits of stars, and even a bit of glass swimming through her bloodstream to create a commotion of sharp pain and foreign alienation.

She reckoned words lost sense for those few minutes. What could one say, really? Her mind was too busy feeling the tide of turbulent winds and swirling change to try and conjure up intelligent words to make her seem unaffected and nonchalant. Because even if she did hate him for all that he did, death seemed a little too cruel for him. After all, he was Draco Malfoy. He was young. Just like her, Hermione Granger. Maybe even younger.

"Dying?" she finally got herself to say. Her words came choked and rough. "You aren't joking?"

"I never joke about death," he grimly chided. "Most especially my own."

"But—" The word flew from her lips like a mad canary. Her eyes danced wildly with alarm and bewilderment. "How can that possibly be? You-you're _Malfoy_! Rich and arrogant and annoying! A ferret! And ferrets _can't_ _die_!"

"On the contrary," he said, slightly amused with her remarks. "Everything dies. And – I'm _not_ a ferret."

"But I don't understand," said Hermione, getting off of the desk and starting to pace. "How can you be dying? You can't just—"

"Would you like me to explain the cycle of life for you?" he sarcastically offered. "It's like this, Granger, maybe you can finally take a grasp – you're born, you live, then you die. That's all there is to it. Death," he said firmly, looking her in the eye, "is inevitable."

"Oh, shut up," she spat. "Who are you to be teaching me about the basics of life – I can very well comprehend them myself, thank you!"

"Don't get shirty with me just because I offered my assistance."

Then she was quiet, looking at him, breathing rapidly.

Draco sighed. "Point is: I'm sick. Have been, actually, just didn't know it. Lucius is a bastard, d'you know that? Oh wait, of course you do," he muttered. "He was the only one who knew about my condition, so it was _real_ convenient for him to be sent off to Azkaban," he drawled sarcastically.

Honestly. The boy was dying but he still had his sarcasm. That really was something.

"How-how long has he known?"

"Years," Draco sighed again. The word seemed to carry poignant, enormous weight for him. "I can't believe it either, but years."

"But—"

"Is that all you're capable of saying?" he said. "Because as far as I can see, there are no 'but's in life. Besides, I don't know why you're so wrung up all about it. _I'm_ the one dying, not Potter."

Hermione felt rage overcome her oceanic feelings of depth and realization, her face flushing. "Unlike you, I am capable of showing sympathy and concern towards others besides myself," she bit out in retaliation.

Something twitched on his face. "Even me?" he asked, intrigued.

Hermione looked at him, pursing her lips, and chose not to answer.

"So, in your pocket—"

"Is a potion to help me keep up my strength," he finished off for her. "I had a choice – die slowly but live longer, or die quickly but have more energy to live the remainder of my pitiful life. Guess which one I chose."

Hermione furrowed her brows, looking pointedly concerned. Was Draco Malfoy off his rocker? Had he really finally gone batty? "I'm finding it awfully hard to percept this with your sense of humor," she said seriously. Her throat was gravelly and rough for a reason beyond her logic-span. "Nor do I understand it."

"Wouldn't expect you to," he said haughtily. "See, Granger, it's different for me than it is for you. You're on the outside, looking in. You see me and you see some dangerously ill boy, just months from ending his short-lived life. I see me and… well, I see a dangerously ill boy as well, but what I'm trying to tell you is that it really doesn't matter how _you_ see it. It doesn't affect you. It doesn't affect anybody else except myself. I can choose whether to look on this and cry my poor heart out, miserable and wasting away all my bloody time, or look on this with a more humorous view. It's hard enough trying to gag down revolting tonic. I don't want to become reduced into some wimpy, melodramatic sod, too."

Hermione looked at him, really looked at him. God, he was a beautiful boy. She could see the fine profile of his face, the perfect and sweeping outline of his jaw. He'd changed since she'd last seen him – he looked exhausted, yes, but as she observed him she realized with butterflies in her stomach that he resembled more of a man now than an annoying little ferret boy. His hair, like spun silver, fell and almost hid his eyes, but she knew better than to think that. Nothing could ever hide his eyes. It'd always been common knowledge that his orbs held some sort of white fire in them, enchanted, swirling with magic. They were beautiful. So much potential. Yet, now, as she looked in them, she saw traces of a slow death.

"See, I'm not ignoring my situation, but I'm not broadcasting it, either," he told her, smirking. Hermione remembered his lips. Warm, soft, moist and passionately rough against hers. Unbridled fervor. Where had that come from? Was it him or was it something else? Just then, she felt her throat contract with her fiery curiosity and she tore her gaze away from his mouth, instead focusing on his handsome face. He was looking expectedly at her.

"But you're… you're dying," she whispered, still in awe of the word. It was a horrible word. It made her tongue feel slimy and cold yet like sandpaper. "Malfoy, you're dying. Don't you feel… sad?"

"Oh yeah, real sad," he said a-matter-of-factly. He was still smiling at her and even in the binds wound firmly around her heart, it beat ecstatically. "But you get used to it. It ceases to become a looming shadow, a burden, but a mere fact to accept. And I've accepted it. I'm dying. I'm going to die. Big deal. Everyone dies."

"But you," said Hermione, feeling an odd sort of anger bubble within her. She didn't comprehend his sense of blithe or nonchalance and it frustrated her. "Don't you feel unhappy when you think about all of the things you're going to miss? Graduating? Getting married?"

It wasn't about their kiss anymore. It wasn't about Draco Malfoy, arrogant and self-important prick, or Hermione Granger, girl on the opposing side, vowed to hate him forever and beyond. There weren't sides anymore – not a single trace, not even a sliver. Past was blurred away. Future was blurred away. The Present was booming with clarity yet stinging her eyes with its inapprehensible brightness. Right now he was just a boy, and she was a girl. Misunderstood and misapprehended. They were down to the basics now. He was just a boy and she was just a girl.

No goodness, no evilness. Just life and death.

"I thought about that," he replied. "Long and hard. But, to be honest, I wasn't expecting anything extraordinary. I wasn't expecting a happy marriage. So it wasn't much of a loss, not really. When you're brought up in the mind-set of destruction and darkness, of living and rotting in your own wicked deeds, you haven't got much to look forward to. Death is a goal. Death is peace."

"Are you mad?" sputtered Hermione. "Can you hear yourself? Death is a _goal_? Death is _peace_? Aren't you going to—"

"Granger, you're blowing this way out of proportion," he informed her, chuckling. "I thought you'd be over the moon. It's another victory for you, after all. Draco Malfoy won't be around any longer to harass you and your friends. It'd also finally boost Potter's self-esteem – everyone knows I'm the most gorgeous of the lot, and now the crown's being passed."

"It isn't about that. It's about your sick grasp on life and death."

"Is it sick?" he mused with a funny look on his face. "I thought it was accommodating. Honestly, Granger, would it make you feel any better if I started to bawl my eyes out?"

"No," she answered truthfully. "But it just seems you're taking all of this far too lightly."

"And you're taking this too seriously. Are you feeling all right, Granger? I'm starting to think that perhaps you just might fancy me."

Hermione froze, looking at him with a surprising, gnarled fist of horror and shock and anticipation embedded but volcanic in her stomach. She could feel the blood drain from her face at his words, instead sending the rushing blood to pound in her head and ears. She felt as if she'd just been tided to the shore by a sixty-foot wave: dazed, salty and confused. Her mouth felt horribly dry.

Draco seemed to have registered the look of a pale revelation on her face, staring at her intently. Then he spoke, certainly as shocked as she was.

"Bloody hell. You _do_ fancy me."

"No, no, I don't," said Hermione, shaking her head, feeling frazzled and very disoriented. She felt the skin on her face begin to heat up at a scarring speed. "I don't fancy you. I mean, I shouldn't. You're Malfoy, and you're dying, and you have this horrible fancy of humor in the image of your own death."

"But you do," his face breaking into a brilliant smile, summoning little jackhammers upon her heart, as if he was pleased and delighted with this piece of terrible news. "You do fancy me. Dear Merlin, Hermione Granger, you're in love with me."

"Are you certain you aren't just concussed?" she spat, in complete denial. She began to rapidly fidget, pivoting her heels. "Because you're getting all of these twisted delusions of things that aren't true—"

"I say, you have perfect timing," he gleefully told her with sparkling eyes, obviously finding much amusement in this. "Shack up with me and – not a single possibility of a long-term relationship whatsoever. You'll get off scot-free, no commitment. Because I'll be dead by then."

Hermione wanted to shake him by the shoulders and scream some sense into his air-filled head. Suddenly, the words scorching inside of her finally flew from her lips – uncontrollable and brash, hinted with every drop of confusion and agony and frustration boiling in her skull. "Why did you kiss me?"

Draco fell silent.

"Why did you kiss me, Malfoy?" she ranted. "In the kitchens? I just walked in, looking for Dobby – and then bam, you're there, and you're kissing me."

He looked mystified. "Why? Didn't you enjoy it?"

"That isn't the point!" she almost shouted at him. "_Why_ – did – you – _kiss_ – me?" Because that was all she had wanted to know in the first place. She hadn't walked in here, in this stuffy, dusty classroom, to find out about his illness. She hadn't walked in here to discover the nauseating hilarity he had in the concept of his own death. She hadn't walked in here to look into his eyes and see something important yet unclear and vague, grainy and just waiting to form into the full, startling picture. She hadn't even walked in here to find out that she actually _cared_ whether Draco Malfoy lived or died. She had walked in here to know why he had kissed her.

He stared at her for a moment, serious and almost thoughtful – in that ambivalent Malfoy way he always did, when his face seemed impassive and blank but with grim consideration written across every pore of his skin. She stared into his eyes fiercely at first, with as much defiance and fire she could muster, but as she delved and plunged herself headfirst in his pensive silver orbs she found with a roaring clarity that she could not get herself out of them. Not now, not never. Not even if she wanted to. And that somehow, in some mad, mad and ambiguous way, she had undone the edge of her seams and sewn him in. Draco Malfoy.

She could question how, and why, and what. She could question the circumstances brought upon her now, like a sudden blindfold, to wander aimlessly in the dark until she bumped into something. She could ask herself just how in the world Draco Malfoy had gotten himself tangled in the messy hands of Death. But what good would any of it do? There was no one except her and him in this room. No one except her and him to answer those useless, soul-exhausting questions. It was then Hermione realized that this might be the feeling that'd been left unspoken all of her life: acceptance of something unknown, but great, and maybe even terrible. Confusing. Foreign. A would-be that could change her life, to make it all worse, or possibly better.

Or it could make no difference at all.

Then a muscle – something – twitched on his face. Very subtly that if she hadn't been watching him very closely she might have missed it. Something began to roll over his eyes like a sheen of happiness, or thunderclouds rolling in before a storm. She was struck with misunderstanding. She'd never seen this look on his face before.

"Just curious, Granger," he said to her, the corners of his mouth quirking up into a smirk. Hermione hadn't resumed her pacing just yet. "Why is it do you think I kissed you? Care to venture a guess? Any guess?"

"No, I would not like to venture a guess," she told him, doing her best to make it sound vicious and spiteful. She tried to calm the restless forces rumbling riotously inside of her head. "I would just like to know. Now. Answer my question."

"But it'd be fun," he teased her. "It's not every day I snog a girl in the kitchens and then have her terribly confused and angry with me the next day."

"I'm this close from threatening to hex you," she warned him. "I didn't want it to come to this, since you're already dying, but—"

"Oh, God, I think you live to bore me," he drawled. Then something strange and unexpected happened – his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Hermione froze, her words dissolving on her tongue and in her throat into a salty nothing, her eyes widening as she looked at the contrast of their skin. She had always thought she'd been more than fairly pale, but compared to Draco she was as tan as toast. Not so, at least, but tanner than she'd ever been. In fact, as her eyes zeroed in at the way his hand was firmly but gently enclosed around her wrist, feeling the pressure of his warmth sending zings of pleasure and excitement through her skin, she couldn't help but think that it was somewhat attractive. His skin with hers.

"Malfoy—"

"Look, do you want to know or what?" He then sighed, looking exasperated, then swung his head slightly around to see if anybody else by some chance had stumbled into the room and they hadn't noticed. No one had. "I was there because I'd missed lunch and dinner, serving detention, and… well, obviously, you were there too. You had your determined look about you and that ugly scrawled letter in your hand… and, well," – he looked uncertain and greatly hesitant now – "you'd always been adorable with your ridiculous S.P.E.W. rubbish. Somewhat."

"Rubbish?" Hermione was able to stammer out, though that was not what her mind was concentrated on at all. She wasn't even thinking about S.P.E.W. She was just thinking about what he had said – what she'd _thought_ he'd said – about her being adorable. Somewhat.

"Yes, now don't get hung up on the insignificant details," he quickly said. "But it is what it is. It was one of those chances. After all, I am dying. And I promised myself that I couldn't die before I had the chance to prove my father wrong."

Hermione, still dazed and startled, heard her voice lightly float out from her lips. "Prove him wrong how?"

Then Draco began to smile again, right at her. Hermione realized she had to get used to this, him smiling at her. It was so unfamiliar and stunning that it made her heart leap and convulse, worrying her and making her nervous at the same time – and not just about her health.

"My father always had this saying to keep me from Muggle-borns, and the fool actually thought I was that gullible," he chuckled, laughter sparkling in his oceanic eyes. Then he noticeably sobered, but still kept his smile intact to make it obvious to her that it was all good-natured. "He told me that were I to kiss a Mudblood, I would taste nothing but mud."

Hermione, her defense popping back into place, was offended. Her eyes became focused and narrowed at him, her lips thinning. "_What_?"

"That was his theory," he clarified. He was still holding her wrist and her nerves were rioting inside of her. Despite herself, despite all of her logic and all that she was, despite his uncanny resemblance to a superior creep – she wanted to pull him to her and kiss him. "But, as you know, my father lived in his own little world," he shrugged nonchalantly. "I wouldn't take it personally."

She jerked her wrist away, his fingers quickly brushing against her humming, excited skin. Her eyes glinted with annoyance. "How could I _not_ take it personally?"

"You're focusing on the negative, Granger," he told her, his hand lying limp on his knee. "Weren't you listening? I proved him wrong. You don't taste like mud at _all_. Now if you'd untwist your knickers, then maybe we'd get along with this conversation without you spitting at me." He made a sour face at her.

But the thing was, Hermione couldn't focus. She couldn't focus on anything at all. Her mind was everywhere. Leaping, jumping, skyrocketing from one idea to the next. Draco Malfoy had just told her she didn't taste like mud – yet he'd had to kiss her just to prove so. She was focusing on the negative – but would it be any safer to focus on the positive? From the way her mind and body was reacting, just from the single act of physical contact of him holding her wrist, she knew well what the answer was.

No, it would definitely not be safer to focus on the positive. At all.

However, instead of yelling at him like the Gryffindor inside her commanded, she simply and merely looked at him. If she were to yell at him now, what could she say? That he was stupid for believing his father in the first place? That he was stupid, incomparably stupid, to have to kiss her to prove the contrary of his megalomaniac and mad father's dim-witted quotable phrases? Of _course_ that much was true. He was dying, but that didn't mean he was imperceptible to apparent realities.

Although sometimes it did appear that way.

Something changed about Draco Malfoy. No – scratch that, _many_ things had changed about Draco Malfoy. So many things that Hermione couldn't pinpoint all of them, even though every part of her wits was itching to do so. It amazed her. Even frightened her. It was ghastly, what had happened. Death had turned Malfoy nice. Bearable. Death had turned Draco Malfoy into an almost amiable, risk-taking, kissing-the-S.P.E.W.-fanatic-in-the-kitchens, Death-is-lovely, smiling and laughing nut job! Had hell _literally_ frozen over?

"See, I'd always known I'd be the one to make you speechless," he triumphantly told her.

Hermione shook her head in an attempt to shake out all of the niggling shivers and shepherd her rebelling thoughts. "Shut up."

"Why should I? I know for a fact that my voice is music to your ears," he teased. "Considering that you're in love with me and all."

"I am _not_ in love with you!" Hermione spat. "Stop saying that!"

"Tell you what," he said to her, so business-like that it gave her chills. She then noticed, feeling her head spin and her hands tighten into fists, that his face was dangerously close to hers. His silver, ostensibly smiling eyes were staring right into her own, and he was so near that she could feel his warm breaths tickling her face. Instantly – her body's functions ignoring each of her objections – she felt herself warm all over. "You don't show up at the Astronomy Tower tomorrow evening at midnight, then you aren't, in fact, in love with me. But if you do—"

But Hermione had already turned and walked towards the door, gathering up her things, preparing to leave.

"All right then, see you there!" Draco called out as she stormed out.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hell really had frozen over. Because Hermione Granger did, in fact, honest to God, _literally_ did show up at the Astronomy Tower at midnight, where Draco Malfoy was waiting for her, still clad in his school uniform. She'd instantly thought about heading back and perhaps banging her head against every wall in the castle to possibly regain her wits and also because she was due for punishment for her idiocy, but he'd already seen her and it was too late. She could see his wide contented smile all the way from where she was standing. Her heart jumped.

"I told you so," he haughtily said as she stiffly walked over.

"I couldn't sleep," Hermione said.

"Ah, that's because you're in love with me," he said. "And being in love with Draco Malfoy is a prison."

Hermione had to bite back her tongue. She was going to agree. It really was a prison. But then that would be verbally confirming that she was in love with him. And she couldn't be. She was simply curious – very different from being in love with him. She'd only shown up because she hadn't been able to stop thinking about all the things he had told her back in the classroom. He'd sparked intrigue in her that day, and when such happened, the only way to cure it was to prove that it really was nothing special to get so worked up about. He would be the same bumptious git, calling her a Mudblood and insulting her bloodline. He would prove to her himself that he hadn't really changed. He was still the same.

She was counting on that.

"So what'd you have to tell Potter and Weasley?" he asked her. Hermione gave him a baffled look, and he went on. "You couldn't have possibly gotten away with, 'Oh, I'm meeting Draco Malfoy up at the Astronomy Tower – and I have a feeling it's going to be loads of fun.' "

Hermione snorted. "Believe it or not, I don't have to make up excuses to my friends."

Then Draco faintly smiled, looking out into the night sky. Hermione was watching him, and as a brilliant but faint trace of a grin quirked along his face, she was instantly mesmerized by him. He looked Godly in the moonlight, and she almost felt her hand reaching out for his on the balcony arm, somehow wanting to feel if he was still as warm as she'd remembered him to be, back when he'd kissed her in the kitchens. He was dying. Draco Malfoy was dying. She felt herself fighting back the words to ask him how it felt to find out and how he felt, right now. Knowing that he was going to die. Was he sad, at all? He had to be. Maybe he could tell her that it was no big deal, but it was, and she knew it. It wasn't because she had common sense or logic, but because of the way he looked now. Contented, but unhappy. Melancholy. The look, she knew, that could only be associated with the knowledge of death.

And right then, at that moment as she was watching him transform from a haughty prick to a smiling, sick boy… she'd wanted to hold his hand. Never mind that she didn't want to touch him, ever, but she received the weighty gist that he needed comfort. And then it occurred to her that perhaps she was the only one who could give it to him. No one else knew. He couldn't have told anyone else.

Just her.

She found it awfully ironic. Here she was, standing beside a smiling Draco Malfoy in the Astronomy Tower, alone, together, wanting to hold his hand because she wanted to somehow, some way, tell him that everything was going to be all right. But she didn't even know that, herself – for how could she possibly know? It was true she knew a lot of things, but not that. Never that. But she knew his secret; most likely the biggest secret of his entire life, and it just confused her so terribly that she didn't know what to do at all. What did he want from her, exactly? What had he aimed to accomplish by telling her he was dying? Did he want sympathy? Pity? No. Draco Malfoy was not like that at all.

"You told them that you were going to bed, didn't you?"

Hermione looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes. Standing here beside him made her sorrowful. She didn't know why. He was her enemy – her obnoxious bully. But no matter how much she insisted that he didn't deserve her sadness or sympathy or worry, it was no use. He was a still a person, a person of substance and feeling. And she found it hard to let that go.

"Technically, I was," she sighed. "But then I came here."

He nodded, his smile slowly, ever so slowly, rubbing away with a look of contemplation.

Hermione swallowed hard, her eyes flickering down to her feet, before looking up at him again. "Look, Malfoy, I… I'm sorry."

He looked at her, locking his captivating eyes with hers. "Sorry for what, Granger?" He looked mystified.

"For… that you're dying," she said feebly. "I mean, you're so young. You've got so much ahead for you. And, you're… you're not going to be able to experience any of it." She'd succumbed into a whisper. "At all."

He snorted, again, as if it was no big deal, and Hermione was getting a bit frustrated with his Don't Care attitude. "Good Merlin, Granger. Get a hold of yourself, would you? Don't be so melodramatic. I'd rather there be no waterworks."

Hermione suddenly wanted to hit him, right there, on the chest. Where his heart was supposed to be, but she was now thinking – even with her recent revelations about his unmistakable and inexorable humanity – that perhaps she'd been wrong. Maybe there _was_ just a bucket in there. A bucket full of maggots and ice chips.

"Would you stop with the act?" she found herself hissing to him, angry. "Don't you feel anything at _all_, Malfoy? You're _dying_! You're _sick_! Don't tell me you aren't the least bit sad, or-or _scared_! You're leaving behind your youth and your wealth, and your—"

"Don't say 'friends,' Granger," he said lowly, still not looking at her. "Because if you do, then I'm afraid you're very sadly mistaken."

Hermione sighed, still looking at him with a somewhat imploring look. Somehow, she could feel a dry, hot tumor at the very base of her throat, but it was growing. Tangling up her vocal chords, flustering her, sucking out all of the moisture from her brain. The cold air tried to soothe her burning face. "I wasn't going to." Then she hesitated, turning away from him and looking at the exact spot in the night sky she reckoned he was looking. There were scarcely stars around here anymore. She'd thought it was only the weather; the changing of the seasons, but there'd been fewer twinkles around Hogwarts these last months. Less joyful and optimistic. She supposed that perhaps it was nature's way of hinting something to Draco.

"It's just… have you ever _tried_ to make any friends, Malfoy?" she asked, feeling sad for him. "I'm sure you could have, if you tried. Anyone can."

"I think your lecture's a bit too late," he chuckled, as if amused. "But I told you, it isn't a big deal, Granger. It was meant to be. I've always had the feeling that I'd be dying young, anyhow."

"But do Crabbe and Goyle, and Pansy, do they know?"

Draco had a slight smile. "No, they don't," he replied. "But I'd rather it stay that way. They wouldn't believe it even if I told them."

"But I think they'd want to know–"

"Don't kid yourself, Granger. Slytherins don't care about the stuff you Gryffindors do," he smirked at her. "When someone's weak or wounded, we leave them for dead. Each man for his own. When there's nothing you can do, then it's better to save yourself than to go down with them."

Hermione had a hurtful look on her face, disheartened by the Slytherin mindset. "That's cruel," she whispered, feeling new scornful feelings budding for Slytherin House.

They were silent for a while. Hermione was looking out at the dark sky, hurting something deep for someone whose true depth she questioned. She didn't like it, didn't like it at all – whatever happened to being skeptical of his situation? What if he really wasn't dying and was just playing some mean trick on her? But would Draco Malfoy be so stupid as to do that? And… whatever happened to calling her "Mudblood"? Whatever happened to acting like a prat who suffered from a face impediment that made him sneer all the sodding time, all the while insulting everything about her and her friends? Hadn't she come to let her sole expectation – that he hadn't changed at all – be proven right?

So, then, why was it looking like he wasn't the same anymore? Why was she hurting for him – truly hurting – as if he actually meant something to her? She'd never once liked him in any situation, not even a little bit. She'd hated him with a fiery passion and she knew the feeling was indeed mutual. But where had these feelings come from? Of wanting to _comfort_ Draco Malfoy? It was acceptable to feel sorry for him, but to actually want to _comfort_ him? And _talk_ to him? What _exactly_ was she doing here in the Astronomy Tower?

Could it be possible that no matter how vile their history was, how positively explosive their encounters had been in the past – that it didn't actually matter anymore and that she _was_ in love with him? Could one kiss truly change everything?

Could she possibly be so stupid and emotionally confused as to let that _happen_?

"I guess this is like karma then, isn't it?" he then grinned, breaking the silence with his self-sadistic thoughts and hurtling Hermione from her suffocating questions. She looked at him, startled. "Make other people's lives a living hell for six years and here I am, with a maximum of six months left to live. If that isn't funny, I don't know what is." And then he laughed, as if it truly was funny.

Hermione, meanwhile, did not find a single drop of amusement or hilarity in it at all. All she felt was the sickness in her stomach, churning volcanically, threatening to swell up her throat, bitter and mordant, like acid.

"I think you're sick," Hermione finally said, her words rough and coarse, feeling a sudden gritty but overwhelming rush of rashness. She was pale with anger. "You're mental, you really are. Let me ask you something, Draco Malfoy, if you were perfectly capable of humanity and being polite and decent, why on _earth_ have you spent the last six years of your bloody life trying to show us otherwise?" she spat, furious for a reason she could not fathom. "Why the bastard charade? Why all the sodding effort on trying to push people down and make them feel like the lowest of shit? Why would you do that – how could you possibly have mustered enough cruelty – to do that? To us? To Harry? To _me_?"

She saw something flash in his eyes, although she could feel her own begin to sting with heat and passion. In his silver orbs, capable of icing over the sun, there was a poignant flicker of emotion that made her heart shudder. In a moment, a single moment of vulnerability, even hurt, she saw honesty. For once. Honesty.

"Because," he calmly told her, "just like everyone else, I thought I was untouchable. I did everything I could to be untouchable. I _was_ untouchable. Then I discovered that that was a bad thing."

"_Untouchable_?" She shuddered with rage.

"_Yes_, untouchable," he confirmed, earning a furious glint in his eye that rivaled hers. "Don't you _get_ it, Granger? I know I was a petulant child. I know what I did. I _know_ what I did to you. But I grew up. In that single moment when they told me, I grew up because I had to. Unlike you, I don't have the time anymore. It's now or never. I'm sorry if I made your life such of a hell that you felt the need to spit it back in my face —"

"But that's just it," said Hermione, cutting him off, fuming. "Do you _really_ know? Because there's a difference between comprehending the idea and comprehending the damage done. Which one is it?" She swallowed hard, staring vindictively into his eyes as his face hovered just inches from hers. "Are you really guilty? Is that why you brought me up here? To apologize? Or to start your own pity-party?" she hissed.

"I wasn't the one who brought you up here, Granger," he frostily retaliated. "_You_ were the one who came, who walked on up here and lied to your friends. I didn't _force_ you to come."

"Yes, but you knew I was going to come, didn't you? You knew. Now you've got to tell me why. What did you really mean to accomplish by telling me about your illness, and about that potion, and about – everything! _Why_ did you tell me?" she cried, and hot, tiny tears sprung to her eyes, her chest crumpling inwards as if she was being crushed. She was so terribly confused. She was desperate for answers. What had started out a meager attempt to find out why he had so randomly kissed her in the kitchens had turned into something dire and almost painful. _Why_ had he told her?

"Do you think I _wanted_ to know?" she continued on, her words soaked with warring hurt and demand, febrific. "To spend hours thinking about you and your stupid sickness and your death? The revolting _humor_ you find in the fact that no later than six months from now, you're going to be buried in a hole in the ground? That you don't even have any real friends – and your lackeys that follow you everywhere you go, you don't even bother to tell _them_? Why on _earth_, Malfoy, out of all the people in this castle, did you choose to tell _me_?"

He stared at her, his face tense and taut but his eyes wild with fire. The moonlight made his face fierce, like an angry God about to carry out the works of his uncontainable temper.

"Weren't you listening to _anything_ that I said?" he said through gritted teeth, glowering at her. "About being tired of being untouchable? About growing up? About taking chances?"

"So you told me because you considered it _taking a chance_?" she scoffed, yet feeling her heart roll with thorns, even more befuddled than before. "What does that even _mean_? You could have painted it all over the castle walls and that would have been considered taking a risk! You could have told the Fat Lady, who could never keep a secret to save anyone's life – or Peeves, who would have sung it out to the world in falsetto!"

"Granger! Would you just listen to me?" he yelled.

"Why? So you could give me even more nonsensical answers about taking chances?" she bit out.

"_No!"_ he shouted. "I can't _believe_ I even have to tell you this – I thought you were supposed to be smart! Context clues, Granger – haven't you ever heard of those before? I made it so bloody obvious a blind person could have seen it!"

"Seen what? What are you talking about?"

"I like you!" Draco said, aggravated. Hermione, stunned, her jaw falling open, heard her ears ringing and wasn't certain if she'd heard him correctly. The heat from their yelling and shouting had made her face flush with color, her cheeks warm. His sharp words ricocheted off the walls.

She wondered subconsciously if anybody had heard them and was presently making their way up right now to catch them and give them both detention and deduct points for disobeying curfew and being so inconsiderately loud.

Then she thought that Draco shouldn't be made to serve detention. His life was already shortened as it was.

On the other hand, this was all his bloody fault, in the first place.

"_What_?" she was able to stutter out once her ears had stopped its trill ringing. Her heart was leaping inside her unraveling chest, feeling exactly like a spool on a wheel – being undone, fast, layer by layer, bit by bit. It was an overwhelming feeling, like nothing she'd ever felt before. Terrible. Great. Wonderful. Confusing as hell.

"I like you," he repeated, firmly. "Merlin, are you dense or what?" he snapped. "Why _else_ would I have kissed you in the kitchens? I don't go around just kissing every flustered, S.P.E.W. letter-carrying bint, you know." He sighed, turning away and running his fingers through his white-blond hair.

"B-b-but _why_?" Hermione was able to articulate (though not as intelligently as she'd hoped) after a moment of trying to comprehend what was really happening. Draco Malfoy _liked_ her? Liked _her_? Where _was_ she? In the interval of those ten minutes, had she somehow – obliviously because of her anger and vexation – crossed over into the Twilight Zone?

"Why?" he repeated, wrinkling his nose, looking at her. Then his face calmed into a look of blankness, though not utter blankness. In the Malfoy way he did – ambivalent, but with seriousness. Contemplation. Looking straight at her, feeling her entire body tremble with a foreign, frightening feeling of anticipation, dread, and desire all at the same time, he looked away and said, nonchalantly, "God knows."

God knows.

Honestly.

He was so lucky she was still suffering from shock or else she'd have hit him. She usually didn't go around hitting sick people, but for him she'd have made an exception.

Then, before she was about to scold him about his stupid answers to everything, he spoke. Hermione could only see the side of his face now, having turned back to the sight of the Astronomy Tower. His slender figure was silhouetted in the moonlight yet obscured with darkness, as if, somehow, it had already claimed him. While the light, peaceful, just touched him, barely. It lit up his face like a holy kiss, his hands as they rested on the arm. And the rest of him, almost smearing away into the inkiness of the place, was shrouded by shadows.

Hermione felt pain just gazing upon it. A sting, deep inside of her bumbling heart, that slowly passed over every single vein and nerve, making her shiver.

"Maybe it's just one of those things we'll never know, Granger," he said evenly. "Maybe one we aren't supposed to know. Life's mysteries. People can spend their whole life searching for the meaning of everything, and some of them find it in religion or in politics… but some of us, we aren't meant to." He smiled. "But it doesn't matter, does it? Just as long as we have something that means something to us in the end. And, somehow, it makes not knowing everything bearable. A little, but enough."

Then, feeling her heart pound in her chest and a poignant feeling waving over her, Hermione neared him, planting herself right beside him. She looked at him, earnestly searching his face that still radiated with regal beauty even with sickness running through his veins. And, finally, she crept her hand closer to his on the balcony arm, letting her fingers rest on his for a second, cool against her skin, yet warm in a profound way, feeling the tingles of something unexplainable but great ripple all throughout her body. And then she found their fingers entwining, their palms clasping against each other's, firmly. And she felt his pulse, a growing pulse, right against her own, and marveled at the simple notion of holding hands. Right then and there, holding his hand, feeling his pulse and warmth against hers, she felt as if their hearts were beating right alongside each other's.

And Draco, looking out at the night sky with the fading stars, smiled.

* * *

**Post-A/N:** Love it? Like it? Loathe it? Please **Review**! I told myself that this was only going to be a one-shot, but now I'm having second thoughts. I think I'd like to find out more about what's going to happen with Draco and Hermione, don't you? But even with the chance (the very high chance) that I'll continue this, I think it'll only reach up to three or four chapters or so, as there's not much substance to go by. Any thoughts? 


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Two years, I know. _Major _lagging. Plz, no lectures. Well, believe it or not, I had written this right after I wrote the first chapter but had major doubts about it. I found it again just a few days ago, read it, and decided to post it up (for fun). I don't know if it'll make the fic better, or worse, and some of you can just choose to not read this if you thought it was better as a stand-alone.

Major thanks to **Lorett**, my beta.

* * *

**Chapter Two**

Hermione couldn't say exactly what it was they did together, or whether there was any sort of commitment formed that moment she'd held his hand. Maybe there was – a vague, blurry one that they hadn't spoken a word of at all – but ever since that night, she'd felt a startling, tunneled connection to him. With a clear reception of everything and anything, and a disturbing yet calming acceptance of them. But could she call her and Draco a "them," really? Were they no longer just singular nouns in the same sentence, stubborn and far too different and explosive to ever be considered in the same category, but a singular pronoun all in itself? A stubborn, _cemented_ pronoun? With no names involved at all, just that they were fused together and more, to the extent that they were simply called one word: "them"?

Yet, even with her questions and qualms, she still lied to Harry and Ron about her late-night agenda, still walked up those stairs every night when she was not issued with patrol, and still felt that pulsing spot inside her chest, alive and proclaiming haywire messages to the functions of her body when she saw his face. His elegant features were always eclipsed by the dimness of the light-lacking Astronomy Tower when she finally reached him, shading in the most sinister of areas, making him almost seem like a ghost.

But when he smiled at her the ominous shadows all broke away and fled, oh, when he smiled… she felt scorn in herself, a gnawing self-blame, when she wondered why she hadn't made the effort to make him smile before. It was only now she was discovering all of this: bits and pieces of Draco Malfoy's dark past, all told out in an elaborate, whimsical but dark tale, and his smile that made his entire face light up, most especially even that dark hole of emptiness in her heart.

But the thing was, she hadn't even known she'd had a dark hole of emptiness in her heart. It'd never been made clear to her, not even hinted, in her past six years here at Hogwarts. Nobody had ever pointed it out to her and she'd never felt it, not really, thus she couldn't possibly have known. It was terrifying, utterly terrifying, when she realized the lack of substance there, the monstrous void, rotting in her chest, hollow and dusty. But the realization of it grew and grew like a cancerous tumor the more she thought of him and saw him – the more words she heard from him. As if she was bewitched. And soon, however incongruent and nakedly guileless it could ever be, it had been completely unveiled to her.

Surreal. That was the word she reckoned could half explain how it was between them. Sure, the romance was rather below par because he was Draco Malfoy and going about this quite awkwardly for he knew nothing about courtship – let alone a hurried one due to an early-coming death – and was intimidated by romance, despite his haughty arguments. But he had certainly warmed to her. He smiled at her more often now, barely sneered, though the smirks were something she considered indomitable. He talked to her quite comfortably yet she could see that every time she neared him she made him nervous.

She quite liked that.

She never thought she could make any boy nervous, at least, not in that same context. On some level, it even thrilled her. And she began to think that maybe, just maybe, he really did fancy her. A lot. It was a feeling that required some time to get used to, undoubtedly. Mutual feelings of affection weren't exactly her forte and she wasn't accustomed to those spasms in her chest or the violent butterflies in her stomach. Or even the fact that sometimes she found herself dazedly staring at him from afar, across a classroom or the Great Hall. Though she caught herself immediately so that no one else would notice, all the while reprimanding herself for her negligence of open-area staring, most of the time she simply wondered what he was thinking about. If he ever just spent hours thinking about his life and his death. If he ever wondered about what could have been, and if he ever wondered about what he could have done.

In all honesty, Hermione did not know how one could cope with such questions. It was painful for her to think about Draco that way. And so she concluded that perhaps the best way to deal with it – with less pain – was trying not to think of it at all. Maybe it'd seem less monstrous that way.

It worked for a while. During her first month with him all she could do was look at him in intrigue, and sometimes, proving that he was still one in the same: disdain. But it wasn't the same as before. Things had changed. Everything had changed. She couldn't look at him and see the same Draco Malfoy who'd harassed her their years before. Because, somehow, it was as if that perspective of him had been swept away with the knowledge of his death, like scattered seeds in the changing winds. It was impossible to hate him, even when he stubbornly carried on as if nothing had happened: he still taunted Harry and Ron whenever he could, still sniggered when Snape bullied their House. Still smirked the same smirk and drawled the same drawl.

He fooled everyone. He was a master at keeping up pretenses, and proving so, he had everyone looking after him with indifferent feelings. They loathed him. They hated him. It was only Hermione who noticed how slowly his color – what little color he had to begin with, at least – had begun to pale a little more with each week that passed. His hair did not gleam as distractingly as it used to. His drawl wavered – but only so slightly that it failed to disturb the natural order of things. He was still witty, demanding, and insufferable. And that overshadowed everything else: every iota of detail, every strand of hair that was gradually losing its shine.

Hermione understood why he refused to back down. She didn't need to ask him – all it took was one look when he'd glanced at her during his usual Slytherin antics. She'd gotten angry with him at first, condemning his pride for what it made him do, but realized that it was unjustified: the Mudblood jokes had completely vanished. The halls were absent of his stinging words and remarks of her tainted blood and family. He uttered not a single word to her when the sun was up – not even a vowel. He left her alone. They passed each other and they looked, at times catching the other's gaze or simply shooting a discreet glance, but that was how things were. Indifferent – yet not, at the same time.

Things could never be the same.

Everything had changed.

But as three entire months passed, the fine-spun spool of time was now unraveling, glowing a dazzling gold before floating right out of their hands, and no matter how Hermione tried not to think of it, it persisted.

Three months. Three months had gone already. Hermione couldn't help but faintly feel the ties of urgency and desperation, acrid and hot, tightening around her lungs and chest. Sometimes, late at night, she found herself drawing back the velvet curtains of their high-rise windows and just staring out at the sky for hours. Reveling in the presence of the stars, like bright, knowing winks in the far inky distance, and thinking about him. And she couldn't help but wonder if he did that sometimes too; if he ever thought about her.

"Hermione?"

Harry's voice, clanging through her fuzzy skull and ears like a gritty and unpleasant tintinnabulation, startled her back to reality. Her eyes flickered back into focus from its daze and looked at him.

He was looking at her oddly.

"What about it? Hogsmeade weekend?"

She sighed, feigning a smile. "Thanks, but I think I'll be staying here instead. They've got a new set of books on hermeneutics in the library and I've already reserved them." She forcedly pushed her thoughts of Draco aside; gaining an excited gleam in her chestnut eyes that Ron rolled his eyes at. "I can't tell you how long I've been waiting for those books!" she exclaimed. "They weren't even in print when I requested them!"

"Honestly, Hermione," Ron remarked. "You've really got to get a life. You're going to end up like Moaning Myrtle if you keep going the rate you're going at now." He shuddered, looking at his goblet as it magically refilled itself with pumpkin juice. "All pasty and… mental." He looked up at her. "Did you know that she's been slipping peeks in the boy's toilet? Pervy girl, that Myrtle," he muttered.

Somehow, Hermione got the gist that he was speaking from experience, which caused her to overlook his insult and simply exchange smiles with Harry beside her, who was chuckling into his cup.

But as she simply grinned to herself, picking up another kipper from her plate, she couldn't help but let her eyes rest upon a blond head sitting one table away, within perfect view from her seat. She watched him as he smirked knowingly at Blaise Zabini across from him at the Slytherin table, his pale face molded into an enticingly impish look – flawlessly mischievous from years of trying to master the art, although Hermione had a strong feeling that he'd been birthed looking that way from his mother's womb. Then his silver gaze fluidly moved over to her, his smirk easing into a more comfortable one (though how smirks were ever comfortable, she'd never know) that triggered another bounce of rambunctious commotion within her stomach walls.

Despite her recent thoughts, Hermione couldn't help but feel searing heat creep all over her cheeks as she hastily glanced away, busying herself with the book she had in front of her, _Of Wizards and Warlocks_ by Dauntrice C. Humdingle. She felt like a human torch, flaring alive with siren-like color, and she felt utterly humiliated by the treacherous functions of her body. She furiously tried to calm herself down, trying to somehow cool her face and ward away the redness. Hermione hated it when she blushed. It always appeared scarring on some level for reason that her skin took quite a while to regain its natural hue, which she reckoned had something to do with family genetics or a blood cell imbalance.

_I'm never looking his way again_, she told herself firmly. Then she gained a substantial amount of scorn and resentment in her thoughts. _I bet he's laughing at me right now_, she thought bitterly. She didn't quite understand why she'd started to flush so brightly, but lately she'd been teetering on borderline frenzy – and, quite possibly, madness. It was simply just that she'd never really been like this before. She'd fancied blokes before, certainly, for though she was a pariah in just about anything dating or social, she _was_ still a teenage girl with hormones. But she never blushed. Not like this.

She tried to shake away the lingering thoughts of the smirking Slytherin, having enough wit about her to quite possibly reprimand him about it later on, whilst at the same time praying nobody would notice how furiously she was blushing. She felt she could have warmed an entire room with how hot her face had gotten. She opened her book and attempted to duck her face between its pages, trying to seem casual yet not wanting to waste any time doing so.

"Hermione," said a voice, and she jumped. She crept her face nearer to the inside of the book. She felt as if she was on fire now. "What are you doing?"

"Er – reading," she replied, trying to compose herself.

"Yes, I notice, but can you really read with your face embedded into the pages like that?" quipped Ron. "Your elbow's stuck in Harry's jam, by the way."

Now even more humiliated than ever, Hermione peeled herself away from page one hundred eighty-seven and one hundred eighty-eight of her book just a tad to peek over the side, slowly lifting her elbow from Harry's raspberry jam and resting it on the table while Ron began to mutter about her severe abnormalities again and Hermione remembered why she always seemed to hate fancying someone.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hannah Abbott had caught a ghastly case of the flu and so her duty of patrolling tonight was handed off to Hermione, or so she'd been notified just when classes ended. Realizing the change of plans, she detached herself from Harry and Ron with a plausible excuse about popping by the library and secretively snuck off to the Owlery to inform Draco. She tried to take precautions when it came to their situation (although the definition of their "situation" was still quite vague) because she still wasn't certain whether he'd wanted to keep it secret or not. Though the thought approached her with a sort of pinging pain and resentment, even traces of irrefutable anger, she couldn't blame him. His reputation was all he had now.

Hermione recited mantras to herself about her dignity and determination not to fret about his intentions at all, for he'd been nothing but affable and pleasant towards her these past days. Every night when they met he offered to walk her back to the Gryffindor dormitories in that Malfoy way he did, subtle yet ambiguous, yet each time she waveringly declined. Perhaps it was out of fear, out of the spooling fright she had that they'd be caught in flagrante and everything would fall to miserable ruins, but mostly it was because she needed to rid herself of his intoxicating presence before returning to her housemates. For although her housemates were not the smartest lot when it came to academics and studious matters, she knew for a fact that they had a knack for reading people. And had she returned every night without composing herself, she reckoned that they could have even read her in absolute darkness. After being with him, she often felt as if she glowed.

That was the worst part. She hadn't a single clue how to deal with this – this sickness. She was not supposed to feel this about him at all – then again, she wasn't supposed to be doing _anything_ with him, so there went that feckless argument. They'd been meeting each other approximately every night at the Astronomy Tower, and occasionally sneaking into the library when the Tower was occupied by innately snogging individuals. There they simply talked. Not once had they kissed, and when she did have the feeling that something was to happen, like an electric spark flaring inside her caving body, causing each of her nerves to erupt in a humming burst of flames, she found herself backing away. And so, naturally, he never kissed her.

But even so, she felt diseased.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

There was a stillness about empty corridors that seemed to pacify Hermione's mind. She didn't know what it was, or why, but she simply knew that as she walked through the dim hallways, her footsteps making a supple sound against the shining marble, the pricks and pinches of weariness from her day were rubbed away ever so slowly. Resolute, yet amorphous. Like a chalkboard getting cleared off of all its calculations.

She caught the golden winks her prefect badge gave out when the light reflected off its surface, like the sun's beauty mirroring off of the ocean. A feeling of contentment filled her, but then she remembered who she could have been with right at this second had Hannah Abbott not caught the flu, observing the way his eyes secretively sparkled – as if they held something cunning and brilliant that the world knew nothing about – when he talked to her. And the way he always stood close to her, and she felt his warmth radiating from him, making her heart beat faster and her knees weaken.

Hermione shivered.

"Granger."

Hermione stopped and blinked. She stared ahead of her. A sea of darkness and gleaming marble greeted her. Had she just imagined it?

But as she heard soft footsteps, the softest, she whirled around. She caught a glimpse of hair the color of sun-bleached daisies. She felt her heart die away for a quick second as she saw who it was coming towards her now. The peace of the corridor and its effects on her mind were instantly tided away with feelings of rebellion and winged creatures in her stomach, like fireflies imprisoned in a glass jar, fluttering about ecstatically that it sent her into a quick moment of shock.

"Mal-Malfoy," she found herself saying, her surprise evident in her voice. He stopped a foot away from her, smirking in his weekend clothes. "I-I thought I owled you that I've got—"

"Rounds, I know," he said nonchalantly, his gray eyes like glistening stones. "I'm coming with you. Now, come on." He began to lead the way, his slender body flatteringly welcomed by the muted light as he walked down the corridor.

Hermione, shaking off her surprise and bewilderment, ran to catch up with him. There was a heaviness in her stomach and throat that she could not properly explain. "What exactly are you doing?" she asked him, as evenly as she could. She had a dozen small frogs in her mouth.

"Well, don't play deaf, Granger," he drawled, and as he looked down at her she could see the secretive smile flittering on his lips like a secret joke, and she almost felt herself swoon. "I told you. I'm coming with you. Perhaps then we can get this over and done with quickly. You Gryffindors dawdle too much and it's time-consummating."

"But, Malfoy," she said. "Aren't you afraid that…"

"Afraid that what?" he inquired, and Hermione thought she'd heard some sort of odd twinge in his voice; a pitch she wasn't sure she'd heard before. Almost like a piano key out of tune. He was looking at her now but as they walked the shades of the darkness fluctuated between light and dark, making it impossible to read him.

"Nothing," Hermione said quickly, suddenly feeling ashamed. She looked away to the corridor ahead of her, a dark empty passage, swallowing hard. Yet she still couldn't wash away that metallic taste in her mouth. "Nothing."

"We'll check the Astronomy Tower last," he told her. "We're bound to catch a few there. So save those detention slips."

They checked all of the hallways, the Great Hall, the Room of Requirement (where they found two Slytherins engaged in a rather skin-bearing activity), the library, the entrances to all of the House portraits, after which they had only one more place left to go: the Astronomy Tower. For some reason she could not fathom, but knowing well enough that it was causing all sorts of odd, clenching sensations in her stomach, she was nervous. There had been an unmistakable dark feeling growing inside her ever since she'd seen him, and she found herself bewildered by it. What did it mean, exactly? Why did she feel as if something wasn't right?

She stared ahead in a daze, trying to overcome the horrible feeling, yet even as she persisted, it grew larger. Then two bitter words began to chime inside her head: _Three months_.

Draco had tried to engage her into some conversation, ranting about the stupidity of his housemates and the relentless mediocrity of Hogwarts, but her answers came sparingly. She felt as if she had swallowed corkscrews. There was something imminently terrible toiling right inside her chest, trickling out, little by little, like a crack in a dam. She didn't even notice the looks he was sending her from the corner of his eye, but his impetuous attitude made sure to make them known only seconds later.

"Granger, what in Merlin's name is wrong with you today?" he asked her, not quite so nicely. Apparently he was rather frustrated. "I've insulted Weasley and Potter _four_ times – hitting all of the right areas: their mothers, their families, their physical appearance, their House, and their lack of mental comprehension. You haven't even threatened to hex me yet!" he exclaimed, as if her not threatening him on behalf of her friends was a sign of the apocalypse. His blond brows furrowed at her, and Hermione surprisingly found herself breathing rather haphazardly as she questioned what it was lurking deep beneath those mercury eyes: concern, or genuine, _deep_ concern. For her.

He was concerned for her.

Suddenly she could not breathe.

All of a sudden, she felt as if she had been seized by something big, monstrous and undefeatable now as she was pooled by his inquiring eyes. It had knocked the breath out of her but had brought her stumbling back into reality, plunging her into a place where suddenly she knew what the dark imminence meant. She felt as if her body was slowly caving inwards.

"Malfoy," she said. Thoughts began to tackle her all at once – vicious thoughts proclaiming vicious realities. Her body hardened but her heart seemed to be caught in the middle of it all: hardening or softening.

Unknowingly – and she got the gist of it now – it had been building inside her all this time. The days, the minutes, the hours, the seconds. She felt panic. Desperation. Fear.

"What?" he asked her. "What is it? What's the matter with you?"

"I-I can't do this," she suddenly found herself saying, and Draco looked at her, stunned. "I can't. I can't do this."

And then she bolted.

She ran down the corridor, turned, and up the stairs. She could hear him calling after her, his voice sending flaming arrows of chills and pain through her charging body, almost tugging her right back to him.

Almost – but instead she kept going.

Because suddenly, she was scared. She was frightened, terrified. The feeling hadn't been nervousness at all, but something bigger and nastier – something, she found herself thinking, inexorable. She should have known this was going to happen, that she couldn't just commit so easily to Draco Malfoy. It was impossible. She was so afraid of herself, and of him, and of what was going to happen.

_Three months._ Her mind picked apart the two words over and over and over again, dissecting it, trying to uncover what it was that was so menacing and terrifying underneath its surface. She wanted to dig; she wanted to find out why she was running not just from him – but everything surrounding him. She felt her throat clenching, her muscles tensing to give her the discomfort of pain along with the severity of her confusion and fear. Her head felt as if it was going to tumble off her shoulders any moment now; so heavy and filled with so many things, but all she knew was – and this petrified her – that it was all about him. Her thoughts, her worries. They were all about him.

And she was scared.

How many nights had she spent thinking about him? How many times had she reflected on the day he'd told her and felt that tumor of pain in her chest, like a vicious black hole sucking the life out of everything and anything, grow even bigger? Not only had she undone her seams and sewn him in, but now everything was unraveling and every single part of her, every symphony of thread and bond and connection that she'd worked so hard for, every single button and layer, was rapidly untangling to the extent that her every single trait was wavering. Her dogmatic nature and sternness, and intelligence were still there, yes, they were – but for once, they were worthless.

Could it help him? Her intelligence? Could her sternness – could her goodness? Did it mean anything to him? Could she somehow, with her intelligence, find some way to un-work all of this and perhaps make him all better? Because along with her tackling and surging terror, there was panic, and urgency. She didn't want to run from him, but she was, because she wanted to spend every single minute with him because she knew that one day, one day not too far ahead, there would come a time when she couldn't any longer.

And so Hermione reasoned that if she ran away from him, he couldn't touch her. And his death would never reach her. And she couldn't ever feel the loss and the regret and the bitter, scornful shame when she thought about the six years she'd so carelessly wasted.

How could this possibly be fair?

How could karma attack so cruelly and beastly? Here she was, running from a boy, because for once in her life, she was afraid. She'd faced larger monsters before: werewolves, Death Eaters, three-headed dogs. Sometimes she faced them again in her nightmares. But why was it that all she dreamt of now was him? And that her fear was swelling into an even bigger demon?

She didn't want to think about it, yet as she ran, her legs aching now and stabs of cramping pain shooting through her side, it still boomed in her head with such excruciating, sadistic clarity. Her eyes had welled up with hot tears that were now baptizing her face in a shower of revelation and a deep, agonizing sadness and strengthening denial. She didn't want to see him die. She wanted to stay as far away from him as she possibly could. In three months, he would be gone. And in three months, she would still be here. Without him.

But when had she started caring? When had this evolved into something deeper, and bigger? The thought of his death had only saddened her before, but she'd accepted it. So Draco Malfoy was dying. He'd said so that it was karma. He was happy about it. Death was a goal. Death was peace. But she wanted to ask him now, with all of the fire sweltering in her throat, if that was still how he felt. Was he really still jubilant about his release from life? Was he really still thinking that he wouldn't miss anything at all? That he was _comfortable_ with the fact of an unlived life; that dying would have been better than living out his future?

But had his future changed, she wanted to ask him. Had it changed when he'd told her that he was dying, had it changed when she'd held his hand that night? Could it possibly, just possibly, have shifted from being doomed to being _decent_?

Did he ever _think_ about it?

She found herself leaning against the balcony arm of the Tower, heaving for breath, with tears running down her cheeks. A few droplets fell, spotting the stone. Some landed on the warm skin of her arm, rolling down, leaving a glittering trail of moisture. It shone like stars. It burned her.

The night air was cool against her face, invisibly kissing her. Her eyes were shut tight as she tried to compose herself, trying to subdue the suffocating hammering of her heart, the pulsating shriveling of her failing lungs. When she opened them, her eyelashes were masked with tears; the eventide sky was a soggy painting that had been left out for too long in the rain. The stars were obscured with the entirety of the darkness, and she ached even more.

And then, suddenly, she felt a presence next to her. She turned her head, almost afraid to do so, and her fears were served true. Even through the hideous, blurry sheen of her tears she could make out the magnificent features of his face. She could make them out anywhere. Her mind had carved him in, a perfect depiction, every moon smile he ever shot at her and even the fine strands of his hair. His sneers she did not ever care for, but she remembered those, too. And she felt her heart break as he simply looked at her with his telescope eyes, adjusting them to see far or near, until he saw what he was looking for.

But that was the thing: did he see what he was looking for? What _was_ he looking for?

She felt warmth atop her hand, and she looked down to see his fingers slowly entangling with hers, sending tingles of pleasant yet treacherous warmth through her body. Her entire being hummed when she was near him.

"I-I can't do it," she told him, falling headlong into his molten eyes. The truth came easily to her now, perhaps because somewhere along the way all of the superficialities of life had all fallen away, like dead leaves in the autumn chill. It was all she was holding onto now.

"I'm scared. It's been three months, Draco. _Three_. And, you're… you're…" She could not utter the words aloud. She didn't want to. All she felt was the strength of his gaze on her and the sob ripping through her throat.

His drawl came to her. It did not seem filtered like everything else, but at the same time, it appeared to wobble. "We've got plenty of time, Granger," he told her. There was no malice, no mockery, but simply seriousness and sincerity. "Three months is loads of time. In fact, you'll be pleading for it to end before it's even over."

She snorted – or she scoffed, she didn't know which it was. "That isn't funny," she told him.

He smiled, and Hermione felt her heart croon. She allowed her fingers to be entangled with his, closing in together, enmeshing. His warmth with hers. His pulse with hers.

"Don't be a coward, Granger," he told her. "You're supposed to be brave, aren't you? You're a Gryffindor. If you cry all the sodding time and run away, then you'd only be shaming your House. Of course, Potter and Weasley and Longbottom do that often already, but you don't want to be added to those bumpkins, now, do you?"

Hermione shook her head. "I want to help you," she said coarsely. "I'll help them find a cure. I will."

"You can't help me, Granger," he said, laughing at her. He was drawing back, his fingers letting go of hers, and she found that he was falling away from her, too. Fast. Just like everything else. Spinning dizzily, smudging hideously into millions of whizzing, running colors. Like Technicolor rain. Falling.

"Yes, I can," she insisted.

"What I meant to say was," he said, "I can't _let_ you. Are you mad?" He was beginning to get angry. "This is how things are supposed to go. Don't—"

Hermione felt a burst of fire ignite within her. "I don't believe you," she fumed, her anger flaring. "Why else would you have told me if you didn't want me to help you? Why else—"

"Must you question every single thing I say?" he asked her, a bit of a snarl in his voice now. His temper made his eyes flash like light upon newly made silver coins. "You can't _keep_ me from dying, Granger – it's going to happen, sooner or later. It'd be no use to hide from death, or avoid it. Only _fools_ do that."

"But you just don't _understand_, do you?" she suddenly shouted. "_All_ you think about it _yourself_! Are you really that ecstatic about _dying_? You want to get out of this world and this reality and this pain – yet you're not thinking of others at all! You're _wrong_, do you know that? You said that it wouldn't affect me – that it wouldn't matter what I thought – but you're _wrong_! It _is_ affecting me! It's affecting me in _every_ possible, most _painful_ way imaginable! Can't you _see_ that? Or are you refusing to see that so I won't interfere with your blissful, _happy_ death?"

He was silent. Hermione could see his tensed jaw, his deep-set eyes dark as another tear slipped through her widening, ruptured crevices. Her throat was hoarse.

"Have you ever thought that maybe… just maybe, your future isn't as terrible as you think? That perhaps things have changed? That you'll be able to live a happy life with someone you love? Or do you avoid those things, too?"

She waited for him to say something, perhaps something mean, as she stared up at him. Then she was struck with shock, a hard-hitting shock, as he began to sneer.

He turned away, looking out into the night. There was a frigid stoicism she felt radiating from him.

"You don't know me at all, do you, Granger?" he said scornfully. "It's better if you don't ask anymore questions. I know it isn't all just bliss. Acceptance is hard. I told you once that I'm looking forward to my death. It's a concrete, resolute peace that I reckon I've needed for years." He paused, still not looking at her. "After what I've been through, it'd be the ultimate resolution. I believe in that." Then he silently sighed, as if reluctant, but he kept his eyes on the sky, almost glaring. He seemed angry at something else rather than her now. "But lately it's been… hard. Harder than it should be. But nothing's changed. I'd like to leave you knowing this Draco."

His turned his neck and looked at her, his eyes fierce and glinting against the dark backdrop of a murky castle. "Don't get it, Granger? I've _seen_ what happens to Malfoys once they step out there." There was a grave air about him. His sneer had disappeared, lost amongst all of the elegant lines and vindictive shadows shading in his face.

There was a feeling of jagged tension between them. As if there was something being left unsaid. Something massive and rumbling like a thunderstorm – almost shaming.

Hermione sighed, swallowing hard, yet she found that it did no good. "I have to stay away from you," she told him, her mouth almost not complying. She had to force out the words, and she felt as if she'd forced out a part of herself as well. She took a shaky step back.

"I can't do this. I can't fall in love with a dead person." She closed her eyes tight, as if wishing all of this away, and a single tear dropped onto her lips, where it waited and sizzled. But she never opened them. She didn't want to see that it couldn't be wished away. She tried to imagine how it'd be right now in her fantasy world. A better world. No death. No pain.

"I can't," she said again, her voice cracking and her heart buckling. "Draco, you know I can't."

He didn't respond.

Instead, Hermione, with her eyes still closed and determined on making some childish idea come true, stiffened in alarm as she felt something soft brush against her lips. And before she could protest, she found hands firmly winding around her, snaking up her body and down, fisting into her hair.

He was kissing her.

His lips were soft but fervent against hers, and suddenly, all of the tension and anger and resentment stacking up within her body disappeared. His body embraced her, solid and warm against her own, and it was enough evidence to her that she hadn't wished him away at all. As he kissed her, his mouth heated and sweet against hers, tasting the saltiness of her tears, it was real. This was real. Everything about it. This was not a dead person kissing her. This was not a dead person kissing her at all.

She was launched back into the kitchens. With her rumpled S.P.E.W. letter in hand, feeling disappointed and slightly aggravated. She'd run all the way from her dormitories, and she was flustered and out of breath. She'd been looking for Dobby. And then, as she called out the house-elf's name, whirling around, her eyes met a pair of gray, and she froze. He was watching her intently. He began to walk to towards her, and she stepped back, alarmed, asking him what he was doing in there, and what he was doing now. But then he'd kissed her.

And that was how it all began.

Her moist hands met behind his neck, then ran through his hair, feeling the silk as it whipped against her fingers. He kissed her and she kissed him fiercely, with passion she'd never known she could ever contain. Her blood pounded through her veins but it had transcended into fire, circulating through her entire being, making her skin feverish and her chest erupt into a great burst of flames.

Then he began to slowly pull away. She opened her eyes and found him closely looking at her, her heart beating painfully at what she found swirling in them now. She couldn't pick them all apart – just knew that all of them, over time and intensity, had melded together into something so profound and poignant that it did no good to try and explain it through words. It was bigger than words. Bigger than explanations, or resentment, or fear. It _was_ fear. But it was something else, too. The core of all life, of the air, of Hogwarts, of cherry blossoms blooming in the winter. Inexplicable and great, yet unknown to those who never experienced it.

Then, as her mind spun and she felt his pulse throbbing right underneath her fingertips, just there, a wonderful yet incomprehensible feeling flooding throughout her that she knew he – at this moment – was feeling, too, she remembered something that her mother had said, not too long ago.

It was easy to be afraid. Right then and there, looking at him and feeling something so potent and great, it was easy to run and be frightened. It was easy, awfully simple, to make excuses and lie and step back to avoid attachment, or pain. It was human nature. Along with the primitive brain and impulses and dreams, everyone had been born with it. Anyone could bolt at the sight of risk, especially if it was something of his or hers, something vulnerable and not easily healed, that was at stake.

But it was not easy to stand up to it. To let it overtake her and lead her where she was meant to be led and force her to see what she hadn't wanted to see. It wasn't easy to face new revelations about enemies, and karma, and death. It wasn't easy, not simple at all, to stand there and take it. It wasn't easy to follow after someone, even in love, when it meant having to see their end.

It wasn't easy to look into his eyes, right then and there, and almost at once know for certain that she couldn't get herself out of them, not now, not ever, not even if she wanted to. Or to subconsciously, but strongly, vow that she was going to do whatever it took to make him stay with her that little while longer.

But she did.

And she knew that that made all the difference in the world.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Things carried on for two more months. Hogwarts was still as busy as ever: Professors assigning tedious coursework, Peeves making trouble, Filch barking after Peeves, the notorious Severus Snape bullying Gryffindor House. Their agendas were routine: Quidditch games, Hogsmeade weekends, the occasional feast. It was a raging battle between Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Slytherin for the House Cup. But as Dumbledore reminded them, they still had quite some time to go, and it would be best advised if they kept their heads to a normal size.

But as for Hermione, she received a barricade of knots in her stomach each day she woke up.

Time was dwindling. Fast.

There was one month left, and she found herself at a miserable loss of what to do. She'd been researching relentlessly – had checked out all of the books on medicine and illnesses in the library and had even owled St. Mungo's and her parents for information. Though her parents were only dentists, a majority of their friends were involved in the medical field, and so she reckoned she could get some help from them.

But Draco had told her the truth that night. He wasn't letting her help him. Only once she'd asked just what it was he was sick with, and he'd declined to answer. He just said that it was incurable – it was an ancient wizarding disease. Rare, too. Only a few cases of it over the last century. And then he looked at her with a questionable look, saying nothing else, and Hermione glanced away. She knew she was an open book to him now – easy to read, and she knew that he would have, through and through, had she let him. But she did not want him to know that she was doing all she could for she was afraid he would only force her to stop. He would interfere and tell her it was no use. Or worse: he would pity her, or even laugh at her.

For even though every single day she came up empty-handed from her research, she insisted that it couldn't possibly be incurable. And she stood by that. The wizarding world was ingenious. It was filled with widgets and curios and serums and tonics for every possible condition. They had to have some cure out there somewhere, and Hermione resisted thoughts of uselessness for time was not completely out until he was truly dead. She believed in that.

She'd even asked Madam Pomfrey, but as the aging nurse looked down on her, her cap looming like a menacing white flag above her, she'd only succeeded in sending her a look of curiosity while finally giving into granting her information of no use. After the Medi-Witch had been done talking, Hermione hastily stood up, hurrying out, trying to forget the chills the infirmary's ivory walls and colorless beds had given her.

Then, on this particular day, she had finally worked up her nerve to go to Dumbledore.

She sat in a luxurious velvet armchair, far too big for her that she felt like a child again, sitting on it alone. She traced the swirling patterns on its arms, relishing the smooth feel of velvet against her dainty fingertips, waiting in his office. Then she looked around at all of his shiny curios and widgets. Some were gold, and some were silver, and some were bronze. There were a hefty variety of them. Fawkes was asleep, and Hermione found herself waiting for ten minutes until the door behind her opened and she jumped. The merry wrinkled face of Albus Dumbledore appeared before her, the elderly man dressed in layers of pale blue. His spectacles flashed as he took a seat behind his desk.

"Now, Miss Granger, you said you had urgent business to discuss," he said.

Hermione swallowed hard, nodding. "I do."

Dumbledore's bushy brows perked in curiosity. "And who, may I ask, does this business concern?"

"Draco Malfoy." Hermione could not make out any of the man's feelings as she watched him. There was no bewilderment, or shock, or alarm. But simply a look of indifference. However, as time dawned on them, all of the curios and things mutedly gleaming from where she was now, she saw that what had been indifference had ascended into solemnity.

"I want to talk about his condition, sir," she said earnestly, her fingers anxiously clenching into her palms. Her pink skin had broken out into cold sweat and the minuscule ridges had become soft from the moisture leaking from her pores. Right now she felt like a rubber ball trying to be forced into the skinny neck of a bottle. "I would like to know his illness."

Dumbledore pursed his lips. "I'm afraid, Miss Granger," he said sadly, "that that is confidential business. I cannot give you that information."

"But I want to help him, Headmaster," she said, trying to find some way she could win him over on her side. But it appeared as if she had been squeezed in now, and the glass neck was shrinking in, trapping her, trying to force her out… "I've been researching and reading books and owling doctors and—"

"I'm afraid to say that your search has been in vain," interrupted Dumbledore, holding up his hand. His usually sparkling azure eyes were dark and dull. "There is no cure for his condition. Believe me when I say this, Miss Granger: Mrs. Malfoy has traveled far and wide – all across the world, in fact – in search of one. Even Severus Snape has joined her efforts. But there is no cure."

"But—"

"I advise you simply take advantage of your time with him, Miss Granger," he interjected again. His voice was not strict, nor commanding, but she did catch the flittering sense as if it was brash. "There is nothing more painful than wasted time. That is one of life's most awful lessons, and I do not wish for you to experience that." He paused thoughtfully, looking at her, and she felt as if he could see right through her.

She froze, her breathing subdued, feeling as if her heart was under close examination.

He continued on. "I've seen a wonderful change in him, Miss Granger. I am utmost happy to say that he is not going to pass away the same boy he once was. That is the most anyone can do for him." He smiled, his eyes gaily crinkling. "Now, if it wouldn't be too intruding, may I inquire why this is of sudden importance to you? I am hoping it isn't for foul play."

"No, of course not," said Hermione, overwhelmed with the disappointment she found in her headmaster. She hesitated. "I… I love him, sir."

His smile vanished. The merry look on his face, the happy squint of his eyes, all fell away. Her words hung in the air, unrestricted, yet heavy and powerful. It was like a mobile: hanging from the highest boundaries, with invisible strings attached that held things that further proved its existence. Its landmark. Things that surrounded it; things that made it what it was. Things that made it stand out.

His voice was instantly grave as he spoke.

"The clock is ticking, Miss Granger."

And that was all he told her.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The next day, Hermione was running late to breakfast. With a boisterous rumbling in her stomach she ran her fingers through her curls in an attempt to compose them in haste, her satchel bulging with her books that the stitches were beginning to come undone. The worn leather strap was slicing into her shoulder. She attempted to ignore it, all the while wincing in pain, as she rapidly walked down the corridor leading to the Great Hall. Her reflection fled after her as she hurried.

Once there, trying to calm her frantic breaths and patting down her hair, she adjusted her bookbag. She felt patches of heat on her cheeks and pressed her cool hands against them. And then she slipped in.

But as Hermione walked through the Great Hall's doors, every single head rapidly turned in her direction. The loud chatter died down so swiftly that her ears rang with the sudden boisterous absence of the din. It was dead silent as she could see all of their stares pointed right at her with a sort of darkness in their eyes that had melded bewilderment, defiance, anger and confusion all in one. She stood frozenly in front of those wooden doors for what seemed like a terrifying eternity, shocked at the alarming reaction to her presence.

Nobody said a word.

* * *

**Post-A/N: **One more chapter to go, though I can't promise on how soon it'll be coming (ANOTHER _TWO_ MORE YEARS FOR AN UPDATE??! J/k, I'm trying to freak you out). But submitting a review would be cool, even if it's the whole WHY R U KILLING DRACO, U MURDERER?! or WHY THE HELL DID IT TAKE U SO LONG?! jig. 


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